Terley, I appreciate the edit, though that color reduction seems to have removed a lot of the softness of the original sprite. Stylistically, every character in the game I'm making has one innate color and the use of grays in their palette, as well, I'm going for a flat cartoony look, almost like if the characters were drawn in adobe flash.

I've added a screen-shot so you can see what kind of environment these characters will be in. Obviously it's NPA, and the the background panorama is a placeholder.


Also, here's a larger npc. Like i said, every character has a main 'color', and this one's is gray.



C+C? My focus here is the characters, but even though the tileset isn't pixel art all comments are welcome.

Hello, I'm working on a 320 x 240 rpg and I'm trying to draw up some sprites at the moment.  I'm wondering if anyone can give me some advice or show me how to improve upon this sprite i've made based on the character's appearance in cut-scenes.  Are you all able to make out facial features, etc? 

Update:  I've decided which clothing set I prefer.  I also tried rendering the sprite differently, as seen below.  Also included: a bush.



Anyone prefer one style over another?  I stress this is a humorous project, I don't want to get so caught up in details that the characters lose their charm.

Here's another picture with a character for comparison, along with a rounder version of the second tree and a couple of bushes.  I'm trying to keep the art compact enough so that I can get an old school rpg feel going when I put it all together. As for the pure black outlines, I'd usually agree, it's just the nature of the art I'm trying to covey.

I think the concepts for your characters have a lot more life in them, the sprites are all pretty much generic mannequin stances. RPGs are a very old and slow-growing genre and there are a lot of conventions that are simply taken for granted with them since the very first Dragon Warriors and Final Fantasies - such as giving all the characters that same tired "soldier-standing-at-attention" type pose. Chrono Trigger briefly challenged these ideas, look at how energetic those character's poses are! But for reasons beyond me that game's artistic innovation was tossed by the wayside and completely forgotten. But there's no reason to submit to these ancient restrictions unless you're using an antiquated engine that demands it. Either way I don't think it does justice to your character designs, although the pixel work is fine I'd love to see some of the energy from the original concepts.

I couldn't agree more with what both you and miascugh are saying about how this particular stance is rather idle and doesn't contain much emotion.  I have two responses in that regard.  The first is probably obvious to the both of you, this is just a simple template I've used to make sure the proportions of the subject are accurate.  By no way assume that this will be his actual idle stance in the game. I'm attempting a more simple, vibrant cartoon aesthetic to shift the focus unto animating as much about the characters and their environments as possible, things will become very alive in due time.  Secondly, I've pondered this idea of vibrancy as opposed to dry rpg conventions in game for some time now.  My solution is that exploration will be 'traditional', but actual object and character interactivity will be more cinematic nature, ala zelda.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNZlW15uZ9U
a random video, but it conveys the idea.  when interacting, things will get more cinematic w/ zooming in/ camera editing, etc, just imagine it in an animated sense.

Anyway, this is diverging some from the actual pixel art, but I just remembered I have the WIP larger sprite of another one of the characters I can post.  I was having a bit of difficulty with army jacket pockets, maybe you guys can help me out. (this is about a week old, I won't touch up on it)

I'll post in next to the smaller sprite.




Also, @ lollige, those sprites would be displayed @ 320x240. A lot more readable at that resolution.

Edit:  While I've kind of given up on using the smaller versions, I'll keep at them anyway.  Here's a new edit.